East Rutherford 2023 Reflection

I wrote this a few days after seeing Metallica in St. Louis in 2023 (some images have been changed or eliminated from the original document posted to the MetClub Forum):

148 Seasons Gone: A Legacy Member Superfan’s Tale of Metallica Love, Loss, Grief, and Healing

I just saw Metallica kick off their 72 Seasons tour in the New York/New Jersey takeover and I’m getting a bit emotional, tearing up even. My heart both rages with joy and aches in grief.  I am one of the first Legacy fans and my journey with Metallica over the decades is like the love of your life ex that got away.  I was thirteen years old when I first heard Metallica. It was 1986 and I had been turned on to hard rock after hearing Bon Jovi at a middle school dance. I wasn’t familiar with this genre, I just knew that these guys had long hair, wore spandex pants, and the heavy guitars were symbolic of how I felt about my life. From that point on I perused the “Hard Rock” and “Heavy Metal” categories in the local record stores and K-Mart for interesting album covers in order to find new bands to listen to. That’s when I came across Metallica’s Kill ‘em All. In a sea of albums covered with long haired band members, fantasy scenes, and other hardcore artwork, Kill ‘em All stood out with its almost generic looking blood stain and hammer. It was so simplistic
yet rebellious. Plus, how much more metal can you get with a name like Metallica? So, I bought it with my allowance. When I popped the cassette tape into my stereo and hit play, “Hit the Lights” blared through the speakers like a tornado and I was blown away. I had never heard anything like it. The music I was used to had a standard structure: a couple of verses, a couple of choruses, maybe a bridge, and the music stayed the same throughout with a feature guitar solo somewhere in the middle. Not Metallica. “Hit the Lights” was like pieces of a dozen different songs melded together in perfect synchronicity with multiple guitar solos that assaulted my ears in a way that left me wanting more. I was more than hooked. I was instantly a Metallifan for life! I used my next weekly allowance to buy Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets but, not long after, when the news of Cliff Burton’s death reached the metal world I was devastated, fearing that my newfound best-band-friend wouldn’t survive but quickly found relief as Jason Newsted joined and Metallica continued onward. I bought every album on record and cassette (and CD once they came onto the scene), every single, every magazine they had so much as a single page picture in, every pin, every button, every t-shirt, every flag, every everything-official and unofficial. I read everything and learned everything about them that I could. I even wrote a Metallica biography (that I still have a copy of but it never went anywhere beyond my personal notebooks). I traveled to record conventions and bought everything I could that had the Metallica name on it. When I started working, my paychecks weren’t enough to cover my addiction to Metallica so I hand painted jackets, shirts, and hats with Metallica artwork and sold them at a local record store to support my habit. My collection was insane! But it wasn’t just about awesome music. In order to understand that and why I’m so emotional after being a part of the Metallica Takes Over New York show I need to give a little bit of background.

At the age of nine, in 1982, as Metallica was fleshing out their No Life ‘Til Leather demo, I watched my biological father try to kill my mother. Naturally she fled but he wouldn’t allow her to take me. He was extremely abusive to me since I was two years old as well as to my mother. Once she was gone, though, all of the abuse landed on me and me alone. That became my life-perpetual abuse. Couple that with non-stop bullying in school and it leaves quite a crater of childhood trauma-the very stuff the 72 Seasons album is made of and then some. Until I found Metallica and heavy metal, I had no friends in school. I had no self-esteem. I hid who I was inside out of fear of more bullying. I self-mutilated, suffered from severe depression, took
speed to escape, and went through repeated moments of suicidal ideation and attempts. Aside from a single best friend in school, I felt I had no one and had little hope for myself. The worst of it was that after my mother had left, my biological father had told me she didn’t want me anymore and forever fed the myth by hiding letters, cards, and phone calls from her throughout my childhood. I was angry, resentful, and lost as I entered my preteens.

Heavy metal gave me a clique of friends, all outcasts like myself, all silently understood by each other. The bands we each listened to varied-one of us liked Slayer, another didn’t, one of us liked Anthrax, another didn’t, but the one band that we all got behind was Metallica. For the first time in my short, young life, I felt like I actually belonged. I had friends that I could relate to and share interests with but the real Metallica bond came when I started to pay attention to the lyrics and actually read them (at first, I was just enthralled with the new style of music itself and didn’t pay much attention to the lyrics). The song that especially stood out to me was, “Fade to Black.” I lost it the first time I read the lyrics along with the song while it was playing. I broke down in tears and I trashed my room in a fit of anger and release. The singer of my favorite band actually understood how I felt at times. I had never told anyone about my depression, suicidal thoughts, or suicide attempts. In those days you kept quiet about that sort of thing, especially with the Satanic Panic running amuck. I kept it to myself out of fear of no one understanding but James didn’t just understand, he and the rest of the band expressed it so eloquently through the music in a way that made me feel like it was ok, even normal to feel that way sometimes. The slow melodic sadness of the verses, heavy crunch guitar anger in between, and the lyrics that pinpointed my very thoughts and feelings at times were all a perfect expression of my mental health at the time. It became an anthem for me-the song that kept me alive, quite literally. When I spun into that dark place, I simply played that song. Just knowing that someone else had been in that same dark place with me at some point was enough to stop me from acting upon the suicidal ideation. I will forever be grateful to James for writing the lyrics to that song and to Metallica for saving my life, even though they may not know just how much they did. During the 72 Seasons show, James introduced the song, “Fade to Black” by saying that he was glad he didn’t listen to his younger self. I’m glad that I did listen to his younger self because that helped me to not listen to my younger self.

From that point on, my loyalty never, ever faltered. My bedroom and, later, my apartment were both wall-to-wall Metallica, from the ceiling to the floor, even covering the fridge. My license plate on my car was FD2BLCK. I learned to play bass guitar (“For Whom the Bell Tolls” being the first song I ever learned and “Orion” being the second) and joined a band (we didn’t make it out of the basement because the singer didn’t want a female band member, despite liking how I played and so the band broke up after a huge fight about it).  Metallica was my Ride or Die; the parent I never had. They taught me that it was ok to be myself and to not care what others thought of it. They gave me the will to continue my life, brought some of the closest friends I’ve ever had into my life, and gave me some of the most amazing memories as I reflect back today. Learning about James’ own trauma and struggles and
connecting with his lyrics in ways deeper than I ever cared to admit made him my favorite member of the band and I hoped to meet him one day in order to thank him personally.

I finally got to see them in concert for the first time on March 9, 1989 at the Capital Centre in Landover, MD with Queensrÿche on their Damaged Justice tour and then again with The Cult on July 28th at the same arena. At the second show, I waited outside the stadium where the band exit was until 2:00am alongside about thirty or so other fans with the hopes of meeting them. This was the first time I was lucky enough to meet James and Jason. Jason was very personable and hugged me tight for pictures. I was incredibly nervous meeting James but I did, indeed, thank him for the song, “Fade to Black.” I didn’t give him any explanation but I figured he would get it. He nodded to me and gave me his autograph. I was only sixteen years old and,
up until that point, it was the highlight of my life to have been able to meet him and thank him.

I saw them at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, PA on November 21, 1991 and again at the Capital Centre on April 1, 1992 on their Wherever We May Roam tour and both times I waited at the band exit outside of the arena (in a leather mini-skirt in 32 degree weather in November!) with the hopes of meeting them again. Again, both times, I met James and Jason. At this point I had been out of high school for over a year (I graduated in 1991) and had become involved in a pen-pal ring.

There was a major underground network of heavy metal fans who became pen-pals in the 1990s. Some of them advertised in the classified ads in the back of various heavy metal magazines, which is how I fell into it. After graduating high school, I had lost touch with several of my metalhead friends and I was looking for a new metalhead clique. I wrote to one person and discovered this amazing network of metalheads. Each letter came packed with flyers that had band names, pictures, and song lyrics alongside a fan’s name and address inviting anyone who wanted to write to them to do so. I became good friends with other Metallica fans all across the country that I had never met in person and discovered the underground heavy metal fanzine world. These fanzines were made by hand and with a typewriter. They included fan artwork, articles, song lyrics, and poetry. I had hit it off with one particular girl in California (I lived in Virginia) who was almost as dedicated to Metallica as I was and we started a Metallica fanzine called The Metallican. I was so excited about our fanzine and its success that I wanted to share it with Metallica themselves. At the time, there was no fan club so I sent a copy of our second issue to an address I found for their manager in 1993. A few weeks later I received a phone call from him! He told me that he received the fanzine I sent him and explained to me that they were starting a fan club which would be publishing a magazine called So What! and asked me if I would be interested in writing bootleg reviews for it! There are no words in existence to describe my excitement. Naturally I said yes and for months I talked to him regularly on the phone about ideas for reviews, my collection, and other things Metallica related. I had graduated from the Metallica long lost cousin that the band didn’t know about to an official Metallica family member (they had felt like family for years, but that long distance family that you know about but never see)!

I wrote an article reviewing a live bootleg double record album that I had snagged at a record convention. It was in a brown box with a paper cover made of brown paper bag and artwork on the cover that looked like it was made with brown and red markers. It was published in So What! Volume 1, Issue 1. The manager also gave me front row, center tickets and backstage passes to a show in 1993 (I can’t remember exactly which show it was) and I got to meet them again (unfortunately I wasn’t able to get pictures this time). In one of the next issues of So What! I entered a contest to caption a photo of James and he was to pick the winner. He picked my caption and I won a leather tour jacket, autographed by the band (which was later stolen from my locked car…and yes, I cried). I was on cloud nine-a part of the Metallica family and giving back to them my gratitude for everything they did for me in the latter part of my own personal 72 seasons…until I lost it all.

At the height of my Metallica family membership, I was engaged to my metalhead high school boyfriend and owned my own business with him but in 1994 I began to experience those growing pains that the 72 Seasons album is all about, although I was 21 at the time. I was trying to discover who I was and was growing incredibly unhappy and unfulfilled. I started college, broke off my engagement, liquidated the business, climbed out of the pool of naiveite, and delve into the deep end of life at lightning speed. College parties filled with alcoholic stupors and life lessons that I learned too hard, too quick occupied my time and attention, taking it away from Metallica, my newfound place in the family, and with So What! I lost touch. The phone number that the manager had was the number for the business that I closed down and, being the irresponsible young adult who didn’t understand the power and meaning of the regret I would feel today, I didn’t keep in touch. As I write this, I am asking myself, “What in the actual fuck were you thinking???” as I Google, “do time machines exist?” O.K., I made that last part up, but I am wishing time machines existed. I had an opportunity to possibly still be writing for So What! or have some other role in the Metallica family to this day and I blew it to be a dumb, young adult. As the song, “72 Seasons” says, “Shot down, Traumatic, Time haunted by the past, Long gone, Dogmatic, Although the die is cast, Shot down, Volcanic, But what is done is done and done.”

I still remained a hardcore Metallica fan in the shadows of my failure, buying Load and Re-Load the instant they came out and continuing to collect things but much less than before. I entered a dancing profession that put me on a stage night after night for the next eighteen years.  In the late 1990s and early 2000s I was married, had a kid, saw Metallica at Lollapalooza in the very front by the stage, got trampled, and nearly died when the crowd surged forward as they opened with, “Whiplash.” I got divorced, went through a life-threatening abusive relationship and escaped, and was homeless more times than I can count on one hand. The stage life brought debauchery for free and I fell into it as the lines between stage life and personal life blurred. In 2003, however, my Metallica bond became severed, through no fault of anyone. I developed a serious medical condition which required a surgery that I could not afford (my job didn’t come with health insurance). This medical condition made it impossible to work so I had no way to earn the money for the surgery. With no family to help (thanks to my parentless upbringing), I had to find something to sell, and quickly. I was still trying to rebuild my life and the only thing of value that I owned was my Metallica collection. At the time it held a value of about $30,000 and I wound up having to sell it for an immensely embarrassing fraction of that on eBay in order to get my surgery. I let everything go-every button, sticker, t-shirt, album, poster, flag, and autograph. The bitter taste of regret burns my mouth to this day. I was too young to understand that I had more options and too panicked to seek them out. If I were a man, I’d give my left nut to get that collection back. At least I took pictures of it before I shipped it off to a die-hard fan in Ireland who promised never to piece it out and sell it.

Selling that collection completely broke me. It was like having your kid ripped away from you after seventeen years. It was more than a collection. It was symbolic of my Metallica bond and the incredible memories of my teen years with them and my metalhead clique. It was one of the most important chunks of my life-the part that saved it-and it was gone in a flash. All I have to show for it as a handful of surgery scars on my abdomen. After that, I couldn’t listen to Metallica anymore for a while. Their music was tied to the pain of losing the last parts of them that I had and I grieved it. It was more than a collection. It was more than a collection. It was a life. My life. My broken, battered, crown of barbed wire that I proudly wore as a symbol of
survival. It was the first and only part of my life that I had experienced joy, love, friendship, and belonging. It was the life that Metallica gave me and it was buried six feet under when I lost it.  It had more sentimental value than the word sentimental can express. If I had known it would have affected me the way that it did, I would have forced myself to figure something else out to pay for my surgery. My Metallica superfan journey had ended.

I checked in on them from time to time over the years like one stalks an old ex on social media. I kept up with the news on them and continued to give a listen to their new music but I just couldn’t bring myself to be the superfan that I was. I felt sadness, guilt, and shame for throwing it all away. I felt that I had betrayed them as a fan and was underserving of claiming that status again. Even as I write this the tears are flowing. Metallica to me was far more than a band and I don’t know that I have even been able to relay just how woven into my life they were as I write this; how responsible they were for bringing the only joy into my life of misery and hell-a joy that I will never, ever forget and will clutch as I go to my grave. I say it again, they
gave me life.

I continued to listen to a song here and there and enjoyed playing Metallica on Playstation’s Rock Band, continuing to check up on them to see how they were doing. I was shocked to learn that Jason left but after watching Metallica: Some Kind of Monster I understood why. I also feel that Robert was an excellent fit. Through these years I also went through intense therapy, addressing the abuse I suffered as a child, and learning how it damaged my personality. I couldn’t listen to any of the heavy metal that I listened to as a teen for years during this time as it triggered memories of the abuse and sent me into rages. In 2012 I developed a chronic illness that had me bedridden for two years. I died, metaphorically. My entire life changed because of it and I had to completely reinvent it. I suffered from extreme depression and severe suicidal ideation…and I didn’t have Metallica to get me through it this
time because listening to them made things worse.

It wasn’t until 2019 that I climbed out of the black pit of despair that I had been in for over a decade. I had lost myself by my own doing, by others’ doing, and by my chronic illness.  By 2019 I had gotten a handle on my chronic illness and have been able to manage it well. I bought a house deep in the woods, on top of a mountain to get away from the madness and to try to reinvent myself. I remained single (developing my chronic illness broke my relationship…an unhealthy and toxic one that needed to be broken) and I began exploring what I actually enjoyed for myself. I started creating artwork inspired by and incorporating nature, I became a paranormal investigator, and I started listening to heavy metal again after finally healing the wounds permanently embedded into my psyche from my own 72 Seasons. The scars remain but I embrace them and wear them as badges of honor. I’m still a bit broken and the thing named suicide still visits me from time to time but now I am old enough and wise enough to understand
where it comes from.

In January of 2021 I felt like I had forgiven myself enough to peek my head out from under my rock of Metallica shame and I joined the Metallica website. A month later I received an email with an opportunity to obtain my Legacy Member status and I did so. While my status says 1994, I’ve been with the official fan club since it launched in 1993. I’ve been keeping up with the Metallica news through the website, emails, and, thanks to the world of digital tracking, my newsfeed on my smartphone provides it to me daily. I learned of the new album 72 Seasons and the accompanying tour and I realized that with my age I may not get the opportunity to ever see them again. I also feared that with their age (they’re only 10 and 11 years older than me), they may decide to retire before I could get the chance to see them again (I sure hope not!). So, I decided that I was going to go to one of their shows. I got my Legacy Member pre-sale code in 2022 and purchased tickets to the MetLife New Jersey/New York show-one for me and one for my daughter who is now almost 28 years old. I bought the new album when it came out, and have been listening to Metallica on the regular again ever since.

I drove six hours to the show and camped out at a campground to see them. Prior to the show, I went through my old pictures of my Metallica days and rode a bittersweet wave down memory lane. To say that the show blew the roof off (if the stadium would have had one) is an understatement. They haven’t changed in their performance one bit. Their power, their energy, their demeanor…they had the exact same intro music from the movie The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, and James still said, “testicles” as he tested the microphone. He still poured his soul into his singing and playing, with the same vein-popping, guttural growling intensity as he had when I was a teenager, leaving everything within him lying on the stage for all to see as his own vulnerability poured out, visible only to those who can relate. Lars still stuck his tongue out and made faces as he played. Kirk still wrestled his guitar strings like the kraken taking over the demon on the pre-show jumbotron artwork of Sunday’s show. Even though this was my first time seeing Robert, he fit with the band so well that he seemed familiar, as if I had seen him back in the day. I became 16 again, screaming until my throat hurt, clapping until my hands and the torn rotator cuff in my shoulder hurt, singing every lyric I could remember, taking videos and photos every chance I could without completely taking my eyes off of the stage and jumbotrons because I never want to lose those moments, and headbanging with my long hair tangling in the outdoor humidity (headbanging as best I can with degenerative disc disease in my neck but it was worth the achiness the next day!). The crowd has changed from my teens-lighters have been replaced with smartphone flashlights, headbanging has been replaced with recording video and pictures with smartphones (in the early years, the arena was a sea of hair whipping back and forth in unison), and the age group has changed from largely ages 15-26 to now ranging from 8 to somewhere in the 70s. Fans no longer gather outside at the band exit like they did decades ago. I know this because I went there on Friday night and waited until 2:00am with my daughter just as I did when I was sixteen. I was hoping to wish James a happy birthday as it was the day before the show, and I had brought an issue of my old fanzine The Metallican and some of the pictures from when I met him thirty years ago to show him; hoping to tell him my story about, “Fade to Black,” about who I was, and to thank him again. I did see him come out and I did yell, “Happy birthday James!” to him but, although he turned and looked in my direction, he didn’t stop. I’m not mad. I get it. From what I’ve read over the years it seems that he’s done a lot of his own personal demon facing and has learned to set his own personal boundaries. That likely applies to fans as well as any other aspect of his life. It was also 2:00am, he’s not 26 years old anymore, and he just poured every ounce of energy onto the stage so not sticking around to meet the strange superfan and her daughter was likely not on his agenda and I don’t hold it against him one bit. James, if you’re reading this, I truly meant no disrespect and I hope I didn’t irritate you by being the only weirdo who waited that long with the hopes to meet you again…and thank you, for everything.

As I woke up Monday morning and started packing up the tent and car for the long drive back home, an intense sadness came over me. I was sad that it was over. I had just relived about ten years of my teenhood over the span of only two wild, raging nights and, like my Metallica collection, it was gone in a flash. I contemplated Metallica and my life’s journey with them.  We’re talking some deep contemplation; some, I’m a half of a century old with a lifetime of wisdom, trauma, and healing, and I just became a part of the Metallica family again contemplation. No bad feelings, no questions asked, welcomed with open arms as James repeatedly referred to and thanked the Metallica family throughout both nights of the show. He told us that we know who we are and I feel that I can finally say, once again, that I know that I am still part of the family, even though I ran away for a while.

And this is where it gets a bit deep. Throughout the drive home and all of today (It’s Tuesday, only two days after the show) I have been thinking about the path that my life took and the path that Metallica’s life took and feel like we’ve been running parallel to each other and have finally converged back into each others’ lives this past weekend, even if they don’t know it.  Around the time I lost touch with my Metallica family and started exploring my mid-life path, trying to figure out who I was beyond my metalhead days, Metallica seemed to be doing the same. They explored different artistry in their music with country twangs, bluesy riffs, Irish ballads, symphonies, acoustic versions, different hairstyles and fashion styles, rehab, almost breaking up, a new bass player, and Saint Anger. At the same time, I was exploring different jobs, different relationships, different music genres, and different life experiences. James went in and out of dark times, struggling with his childhood trauma induced demons and addictions, and so did I. Both Metallica and I seemed to fumble through those two decades, growing further and further away from the very roots that we planted in the 1980s and 1990s and trying to live up to the expectations of others, losing ourselves in the process, until now, with the release of 72 Seasons, kicking off the new tour, and my finding my way back to them at just this moment.

72 Seasons is the Metallica of the 1980s and 1990s. It’s the same insane song structure that pushes you, pulls you, and punches you, steamrolling over you like a freight train, tripping you up when you think you’ve got the chord progression down, breaking your face with whirlwind guitar solos, blowing your mind with veiled lyrics that are more relatable than they appear on the surface, and just flat out grinding you into the ground with as much GRRRRRR! as possible, but with all of the wisdom and experience of the lifetime lived since the 1980s and 1990s. 72 Seasons is my life. It’s my Metallica life; the life that Metallica gave me. It’s just as relatable to me as, “Fade to Black” was/is. Listening to that album, reading the lyrics, and attending the concert made me feel just as much a part of the family as I did in the 1980s and 1990s but its bittersweet as I now live with the regret of hiding away from my Metallica family for so many years. I seem to have missed out on all of the shows, music, growth, and opportunities but at the same time, I feel like I’ve been there all along, feeling my way through the years just as they were, finding them again at just the right moment in my life, when I’m going back to college and pursuing the things I was pursuing before I became lost from Metallica. Today, I’ve picked up where I left off in my life when I was 19 years old and wrote my first article for So What! The only thing that was missing from it now was Metallica and I just got them back. I’m already planning to get tickets to another show, general admission this time so I can be up against the stage (I wish I could afford snake pit tix!). I was hoping to save up for a, “Nothing Else Matters” experience package but sadly they are all sold out. I can only hope that we all live to see another tour where I most definitely will get a meet & greet experience and hopefully tell them my superfandom tale (at least the Cliff Notes version of it) and thank them for the life and memories they’ve given me-one that has helped me to define myself, to both survive and heal from my childhood trauma, and one that I will never forget.  Until that time, to James, Lars, Kirk, Cliff (R.I.P.), Jason, and Robert, much love, and…Lux Aeterna!

*Note:  My memory has been fuzzy in recalling the past details and concerts from my teen years so they might not be totally accurate here.